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At Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School in Thunder Bay, nurse Mae Katt uses suboxone to help wean teens off opiates.

Nurse Mae Katt is part of a team that has devised a way to help students hooked on Oxycontin and other opiates, such as Percoset and morphine, wean themselves off and stay drug-free, with the help of medication and intense counselling.

"“I tell these students, ‘Now, look how wonderful you are; you should see how bright your faces are, so full of energy, when before you didn't look well.' ”"

Mae Katt

Ojibwa nurse practitioner

This isn't your average Ontario high school, and Mae Katt is no ordinary school nurse.

Working with possibly the most troubled student body in the province — native teens from remote northern reserves — she has searched for a way to help them get off drugs and build a future.

The Ojibwa nurse practitioner, who received honourable mention in this year's Nightingale awards, helped craft a lifeline at a Thunder Bay high school for native teens wrestling with levels of addiction that are almost unimaginable anywhere else.

She is part of a team that has devised a way to help students hooked on Oxycontin and other opiates, such as Percoset and morphine, wean themselves off and stay drug-free, with the help of medication and intense counselling.

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This is no small victory at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, where a staggering 60 per cent of the 150 students admit they use opiates.

“And a lot of them were injecting,” notes Katt. “It reflects the usage rates in their home communities, which can be as high as 70 per cent, 80 per cent. These students often come from homes where drugs are being used. It's a major crisis in the North.”

So is suicide, which has also left the students with scars.

“Most of these kids would have lost an uncle, aunt, teenager, parent. So many are suicide survivors,” says Katt. “They're suffering unresolved grief and, in many cases, post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

But when they do want to kick drugs, traditional methadone treatments are not the answer, she says, because the teens fly home for holidays to tiny First Nations communities where methadone is unavailable.

“They come to us because their life is out of control; they've been kicked out of their boarding home, or been caught shoplifting or stealing, or other things they're ashamed of, and they'll say, ‘Can you help me?' ” says Katt, who believes the fact she is native herself, from Lake Temagami First Nation helps create trust.

“We needed something to help these kids through withdrawal, but something portable they could take back home with them.”

Katt, who also holds a master's degree in education, had read studies in other countries that showed an opiate called suboxone can help with detox programs.

“It fools your brain and reduces the craving, so you're not constantly thinking about the drug and can concentrate on your school work,” she says. “But it doesn't activate the sense of being high, and you can't overdose on it, so it's safe and effective.”

Better yet, the $5 pills are portable and can be sent to the nursing stations back home during vacation, so students can keep taking them.

A pilot project was launched in February 2011, with the help of the federal, provincial and local Northern Nishnawbe Education Council that runs the school.

About 24 addicted students tried suboxone for several weeks, with support and counselling from social workers and elders.

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“It takes five to 10 minutes a day to come into the clinic, sit with us, put the pill under your tongue and let it melt,” says Katt.

“But the key is also the mandatory support we give them: the drug education, the counselling on dealing with stress, and avoiding situations where others are doing it.”

Two years later, Katt says the results are promising. They suggest opiate addicts who use suboxone for about 30 days have a high rate of success in kicking the habit, if this is combined with mandatory counselling and a personal plan to avoid relapse.

“We have a couple on the honour roll, and six students who have graduated from the program have gone on to community college,” she says. “While some relapsed, they started again and we've been surprised by the retention after nine, 12, even 15 months.”

Colleague Tannice Fletcher-Stackhouse nominated Katt for the Nightingale award for being a “true nursing leader in our community.”

“Students come to Thunder Bay to attend high school and are thrown into a different culture and urban setting that many struggle with,” she wrote.

“Her care and compassion is what drives her to help First Nation students.”

Katt says some of the families back home saw the progress their teens were making with suboxone and wanted to try it as well.

So she has been visiting communities to expand the program during the past 16 months.

“When you get near the end stage of a nursing career, after 31 years, you're looking for a worthy cause,” she says. “To help these teenagers change their life — to see them become such high-functioning young people physically, intellectually — every nurse has that conviction.

“If you can save a life, that's what keeps me going,” said Katt.

“I tell these students, ‘Now, look how wonderful you are; you should see how bright your faces are, so full of energy, when before you didn't look well.

“Now you're happier, cleaner, more physically fit.”

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